Trevor, thanks for sharing. I've seen this earlier. Good documentary. They also called them "Ribs".
History has a way of going in circles. putin and his thugs coined a few new terms for musicians who oppose war. One of them translates to simple "unwelcomed". Not forbidden, but not welcomed What it means, is 99% of times privately owned arenas, stages, clubs would not allow performance if musician or band is labeled as "unwelcomed". Obviously no radio plays. Who knows, maybe soon music would be traded in some dark corners of the parks by the means of physical SD cards in Russia... Ohh well after a night, there always be a morning.
--- Billy, My cousin was in a rock band in mid 80s in Riga. I remember spending a week with him while he was building an electric guitar from scratch. Acoustics were available. Crappy, but available. Factory made electric guitars were something like a distant dream. Most garage band kids made their own.
Back in the 1970s and 80s, I was in Europe a good bit. Running into someone from the USSR was more common for me in Paris and London than here in the southern part of the United States.
I listened to the same sort of descriptions of how few quality electric guitars were in Russia in those days from people who saw me play a Fender Strat in London and Paris. The two or three people I talked to said their guess was less than a dozen foreign factory-made electric guitars probably existed in the whole country.
In those few encounters, the Russian kids I met wanted to know about the construction. It was illegal to import an electric guitar to Russia.
So like you said, kids in Russia were building them the best they could.
One of the people I played with as a kid was a guitar builder. Because of being friends with Dave and Bart of Rockin Robin, I knew a good bit about how guitars were made. That played into the conversations with the Russian kids.
There were language issues, and I only spoke English and a few words in German at the time. You know, German girlfriend thing. I spoke a few words in French but for sure not one word in Russian.
All this was in 1970 and forward from then. The world was a different place in those days. But kids were kids, and we all wanted more or less the same thing. Girls, drugs, and Rock N Roll.
There were some restrictions on what you could do, say, or sing about in the United States and Europe.
It was beyond my ability to have much of a concept of what the kids from the USSR had to deal with then. Even now, it is hard to imagine going to prison for buying or selling a record.
There were only three TV stations in America, CBS, ABC, and NBC back then. The FCC highly regulated the TV on what you could say and how you could dress. I am not sure, but as I recall, only the BBC was in England.
Typing this on the internet tonight makes remembering those days look like the dark ages...lol
Billy
EDIT: LOL...you need to understand for guys my age, everything east of the Berlin Wall was Russia or, for some of us, slightly more well-traveled USSR. Latvia may as well not have existed. No disrespect intended; we were just pretty isolated and uneducated about other countries.
How all us "Hippie" kids got to Europe back in the day...lol
Vickers Viscount, slow, very noise, but cheap enough. $179 round trip from New York to Luxembourg
A quoit
"During those years, Loftleiðir was often referred to, even by the company's staff, as "the Hippie Airline" or even "the Hippie Express".[27] Loftleiðir was not famous for speed or punctuality, but flying with the company became a sort of rite of passage for young "hippies" from America travelling to Europe, one of whom was future president of the United States Bill Clinton"
What it means, is 99% of times privately owned arenas, stages, clubs would not allow performance if musician or band is labeled as "unwelcomed". Obviously no radio plays. Who knows, maybe soon music would be traded in some dark corners of the parks by the means of physical SD cards in Russia... Ohh well after a night, there always be a morning.